My view: Well, if Spadacio wins this after the worst season since his arrival to Rapid, it means that the guy is way too good for this league, but not good enough for a better one, given the lack of offers from Europe this summer… Anyway, let’s just say that Sanmartean made a nice comeback in Liga I, but he still looks like he wouldn’t like to give too much on the pitch – he probably waits to turn 34, 35. If Lopez Caro wants to win something next season, well, he should try and make this guy give it all for FC Vaslui. I wouldn’t have included here Peralta, as he’s more of a number 8 than a number 10, while Vezan is the absolute surprise. Should I add that, in spite of this “achievement”, the guy has just been released on a free transfer by International Pitesti? Thumbs up, though, for Florin Dan, an experienced player who gave it all to save Unirea Alba Iulia, who just missed out on this Top 5.

My choices: Well, to say Radut, now, after Steaua got his signature and he made his debut among the seniors in the National Team doesn’t make me much of an observer, right? But, looking through the list of players taken into consideration, there isn’t another young&promising attacking midfielder out there. And that’s quite sad. And scary!

Note: the top five is taken from Gazeta Sporturilor, a newspaper that uses the service of Digital Soccer Project. These results are based on a series of specific criteria for each position, include only players that have collected at least 1.200 minutes on the pitch in the past season and the only subjective part of the analysis consists in the average marks received by the newspaper’s writers.

Radu Baicu

• 15 years of continuous work in scouting, for top clubs and companies;
• Worked for clubs like Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Hannover 96, covering the Romanian market;
• Worked for Birmingham based company ‘The Scouting Network’ (www.tsn.co.uk) as a football scout;
• Worked for Zurich based company Boutique Football as a scouting network coordinator;
• International scout for Young Boys Bern for 2 years, covering Eastern European football.
• Working for the past 5 years as an international scout for a top French club.